


Bright And Numerous As Stars

by imaginary_golux



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Fluff, Freckles, Multi, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Scars
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-29
Updated: 2016-02-29
Packaged: 2018-05-23 20:56:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,107
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6129816
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imaginary_golux/pseuds/imaginary_golux
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Finn wakes up from a nightmare, one of the things that calms him down is counting his lovers' scars and freckles. It's very soothing.</p>
<p>Beta by my Best Beloved, Turn_of_the_Sonic_Screw.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bright And Numerous As Stars

Finn wakes up, panting, just before the reconditioning helmet can block out the world. “Kriff,” he whispers into the darkness. Rey snuggles a little closer on his right, slinging an arm and a leg across him; Poe snuffles into his left shoulder. The sound of their breathing is familiar, comforting, grounding. He’s not there. He’s not. There will be no reconditioning, no decommissioning. He will never be FN-2187 again.

“BB-8,” he whispers, and the little droid beeps a quiet acknowledgement. “Can you turn the lights up, just a little?”

Another quiet beep, and the darkness turns to dimness - just bright enough that he can see the forms of his sleeping lovers, the little droid across the room rolling back to its power station. “Thanks,” he murmurs, and falls silent, looking down at Rey.

She’s just as beautiful in the dim almost-darkness as she is in the full light of day, or at any other time; Finn is constantly amazed that she has chosen _him_ , that this beautiful brave woman prefers him and Poe to any of the many, many other people vying for her attention. Almost everyone on base would be pleased to be Rey’s lover - beautiful Rey, the newest Jedi in the galaxy, the light of their hope. And she is here, in the bed she shares with Finn and Poe, with her cheek against Finn’s shoulder, fast asleep. The light is just bright enough that Finn can see her freckles, and he starts counting them absently, to distract himself from the mental image of the reconditioning helmet which is waiting in the darkness behind his eyes. He’s up to fifty-three - though some of those might be shadows, he’s not sure - when she twitches a little from whatever dream she’s having and rolls over, tucking her back against his side and resting her head on the curve of his elbow. Rey can sleep anywhere, Finn and Poe have learned - she probably won’t even notice how bony Finn’s elbow is. She’s slept on worse.

But now her freckles are well out of counting range. Finn looks the other way, to where Poe is still snuffling against his shoulder. Rey is a fairly restless sleeper, flipping over half a dozen times a night; Poe, however, picks one position and stays that way. Occasionally this means that his limbs go to sleep during the night, so Finn and Rey try to make sure that he’s comfortable before he passes out.

Finn himself was trained to be still in his sleep, as he was trained to shoot and to clean and to obey orders without thinking. He still sleeps flat on his back, still as death, because that sort of training doesn’t go away in a year. But it’s different now, with his lovers beside him, their warmth against his skin and their breath soft and soothing in the dark room. Even when there were nineteen other people in his barracks, he was alone in his bed; now he’s never alone.

Poe doesn’t have freckles like Rey does. Finn thinks briefly about trying to count the individual hairs of Poe’s stubble - Poe shaves in the morning, and so this time of night his jaw is dark with little prickly hairs, and it amuses him to give both of his lovers beard-burn - but before he can start, his eyes catch on the scar on Poe’s shoulder. It’s a new injury, barely a month old, and Finn knows it rather more intimately than he would like, since he was assisting the medics the day Poe was brought in bleeding from a bit of shrapnel, and he helped wash the wound and cover it with bacta patches and pour a painkiller down Poe’s throat. But Poe wasn’t actually _that_ badly injured - a scar, no more, and even that is nearly superficial - so Finn’s calling it a success. Every one of Poe’s scars is a success, because Poe is _here_.

Finn’s eyes trail down Poe’s arm to the fine white lines along the forearm - _went through a window in a bar-fight when I was young and foolish_ , Poe had told Finn and Rey a while back - and then to the little burn scars littering all of Poe’s fingers, legacy of years of fixing spaceships. Rey has similar scars on her own deceptively-slim fingers. Poe scars aren’t quite as soothing to count as Rey’s freckles, but they each have a story, and each of them proves that Poe survived, that he is _here_ , so Finn tries to tell himself the stories of every scar he can see.

There’s one on Poe’s hairline which is courtesy of Kylo Ren’s interrogation; Finn’s not fond of that one, though it’s also a memory of their first meeting. There’s a patch of slightly-lighter skin on the back of Poe’s shoulderblade which is the legacy of a long-ago burn, from back when Poe was young enough to do foolish things like wrestle with friends near live hotplates. There’s a long thin scar down over Poe’s ribs from a crash in his very first X-Wing; a jagged line down one leg from a battle in which he dodged _almost_ all the incoming shrapnel from the spaceship he’d just blown up. One toe is a little crooked from a childhood incident Poe claims to not even remember.

Poe is beautiful, not in the same sleek way as Rey is - Rey is beautiful like a blaster in perfect repair, like her staff with its deadly elegance - but in his own way. Poe is beautiful like his jacket is beautiful, because it has been loved for so long that its scars become badges of honor. Finn is so kriffing lucky.

The lights get brighter - Finn glances over at the clock, which informs him that it is time to get up. He’s used to operating on not much sleep; he’s gotten more tonight than he sometimes does, actually. He’ll be fine for the day.

Beside him, Poe opens his eyes and wrinkles his nose at the steadily brightening lights. “G’morning,” he says, and leans up to press his lips briefly against Finn’s, then rolls out of bed and stumbles into the refresher. Poe’s not at his best before caf, and he takes longer in the refresher than either of his lovers, so they tend to leave him alone until after breakfast. Finn rolls onto his side and curls around Rey, petting her hair with the hand not trapped under her.

“Hey,” he murmurs, and she bats at his hand and then rolls over to look up at him. “Morning.”

“Morning,” she agrees, and kisses him, freckles beautiful and clear across the bridge of her nose.


End file.
